Graphic presentation of dialect-ethnographic texts of Western Polissia

Western Polessia is a region divided after World War II by the state borders between Ukraine, Belarus and Poland. This was reflected not only in the languages of education, the general cultural background, but also, in particular, on the principles of presentation of dialectethnographic texts. When compiling and editing the volume “Ethnographic Image of Ukrainians Abroad. Corpus of expeditionary folklore and ethnographic materials” (part 1, 2019), we encountered different graphic design of dialectal and ethnographic texts of Western Polissia in publications from different countries. The volume contains texts from the territory of Brest region (Belarus) and Northern Podlasie (Poland), recorded by the staff of the Rylsky Institute of Art Studies, Folklore and Ethnology, as well as kindly provided by other researchers’ published and unpublished materials, collected since the early 1970s. As this volume is adjacent to the 10-volume collection of field materials “Ethnographic Image of Ukraine”, it became necessary to unify the graphic presentation of Western Polissia texts from different regions and different scientific schools. The developed algorithms for metagraphing of texts from the phonetic transcription of AUM and the special system of F. Klimchuk made it possible to present them in a unified and accessible way for non-philological readers. This emphasizes the unity of the Western Polissian dialect and the cultural continuum.

WORD FROM ABROAD

[Ethnographic Image of Ukrainians Abroad: the Corpus of Expeditionary Folklore and Ethnographic Materials. Part 1. Culture of Life Necessities and Traditional Socio-normative Practices (Еd. by H. Skrypnyk; National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, M. Rylskyi IASFE. Kyiv, 2019. 676 p.: ill.)]

Male Costume of Serbia and Montenegro on the Frontispieces of 19th Century Books (From the Slavic Literature Fund of the Russian Academy of Sciences Library)

The article analyzes eight frontispiece portraits of Serbian and Montenegrin statesmen from the 12–19th century as well as one collective ethnographic image of an inhabitant of the Bay of Kotor. These consist of prints found in seventeen Serbian and Montenegrin 19th century publications which were found in the Slavic Literature Fund of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Saint Petersburg). The portraits are considered as works of book graphics, as historical and ethnographic sources. They were compared with other pictorial sources — originals of portraits, images of genuine clothing and jewelry, as well as ethnographic materials. There are detailed descriptions of the costumes depicted in the portraits, the names and characteristics of the clothes, hats and decorations. As a result of the comparison, it was found that some engravings are fictitious images, while others, made from pictorial lifetime originals, can serve as important material for the reconstruction of Serbian and Montenegrin appearance and costume, including specific historical figures. An attempt was made to reveal the relationship of the costume of the ruler at the end of the 18th — first half of the 19th century both with the fashion trends of the era, and with his national identity and political views. These aspects manifested themselves with particular vividness in the portraits of Milos Obrenovich, Karageorgy, Vladyka Daniel and Peter Petrovich Njegos. The analysis of portraits in chronological order made it possible to touch upon the theme of Serbian and Montenegrin costume history, which has been insufficiently studied in the Russian press.

Construction of the Ethnographic Visual Image of Komi-Zyrians in the “Artistic Ethnology” of the Late 19th – 20th Centuries

The article discusses the history of construing and representing the ethnographic image of Komi-Zyrians in popular and academic literature of 19th and 20th centuries by analysing painted, porcelain and postcard images of Komi-Zyrians of the 19th – early 20th century. Special attention is paid to how Komi ethnicity was visualized on the basis of reproducing stereotypically the “Depicted Zyrian” images. On the basis of these images, the topic of the possible influence of retrospective ethnographic research on the popular beliefs of how a Komi-Zyrian should look like is raised and discussed. It is suggested that both Russian and Western scholars followed the ideology of “Finno-Ugric authenticity” in the ethnographic visual images of Komi they constructed: all the artefacts, which could be associated with Russian or other not Finno-Ugric cultures were literally or symbolically removed from the images or downgraded to “insignificant texts”. Finally the possibility of a correct translation of the ethno-cultural heritage by the means of the modern media technologies – the ones that promote ethnic images into virtual images of the cyberspace – is critically discussed.

Innovative Potential of Photobook Format in Ethnocultural Communication

The features of such a widely used format as a photo book in the context of visual ethnography were reviewed in the article. It is noted that the photobook is studied as a tool for creating visual ethnographic materials that allow to conduct a research on modern cultures and ethnic groups to form a cultural identity. Methods. As the subject of analysis, modern photobooks created by the photographer from Japan Ikuru Kuwajima were selected. Results. The potential of the photobook as an author's work is revealed and its communicative potential in ethnocultural interaction is described. An ethno-photo book is defined as a format of visual communication in which each photograph has an ethnical meaning, which contributes to the creation of author's photo narration, as a specific form of reflection of an ethnos, with a representation of ethnic images. The special functions of the ethno-photo book, which are realized upon activation of the author’s principle, are highlighted: the search for their own identity; pictorial (plot) narrative about an ethnic group; creating the integrity of ethno-narration; increment of information about the ethnic group; ethnos research by means of a photo image; details of the ethnic world view; preservation of ethnic pictures of the world; comprehending the culture of another. It has been determined that a modern photo book is distinguished by documentary content and multimedia features that give its content traits of pragmatism and streaming. An ethno-photo book is manifested as a meaningful substantial work in which the author narrates a pictorial story about an ethnos through photographs, creating a holistic artistic and semantic image of the ethnos. It is concluded that all this contributes to a special emphasis of the reader on certain elements of the ethnographic image and contributes to the creation of new information about the ethnos. It is mentioned that one of the varieties of photobooks is the author's photobook, as an in-depth study of oneself in the context of the ethnicity of the territories reflected in the photo-chronicles of the photographer.

Reparative Mediations

Just as the exploration of geographic areas such as the Amazon is economically extractive, an extractive logic has informed ethnographic image production from its inception. Travelers collect valuable records to fulfill the interests and needs of metropolitan publics, as well as to furnish their museums, libraries, and archives—often leaving indigenous subjects diminished by the experience of contact. The cooperative Video in the Villages (VNA) attempts to invert this extractive pattern through the repatriation of archival images to indigenous communities and the introduction of video technology for indigenous use. Focusing on the group’s inaugural video and several recent works made in collaboration between indigenous and non-indigenous filmmakers, this chapter traces the group’s attempt to rework the contact imaginary and re-orient the ethnographic archive to serve indigenous needs.

The face of the other: the particular versus the individual

Five interrelated case studies from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries develop the dynamic contrast between portraiture and pictorial genres newly invented in and about Latin America that do not represent their subjects as individuals despite the descriptive focus on the particular. From Jean de Léry’s genre-defining proto-ethnographic text (1578) about the Tupinamba of Brazil to the treatment of the Creole upper class in New Spain as persons whose individuality deserves to be memorialized in contrast to the Mestizaje, African, and Indian underclass objectified as types deserving of scientific study, hierarchical distinctions between portraiture and ethnographic images can be framed in historical terms around the Aristotelian categories of the universal, the individual, and the particular. There are also some intriguing examples that destabilize these inherited distinctions, such as Puerto Rican artist José Campeche’s disturbing and poignant image of a deformed child, Juan Pantaléon Aviles, 1808; and an imaginary portrait of Moctezuma II, c. 1697, based on an ethnographic image, attributed to the leading Mexican painter Antonio Rodriguez. These anomalies serve to focus the study on the hegemonic position accorded to the viewing subject as actually precarious and unstable, always ripe for reinterpretation at the receiving end of European culture.

Once Upon a Time, There Was Sex in Georgia

Georgians have long found in the remote mountainous regions of Georgia, Pshavi and Khevsureti, a fragmentary ethnographic image of a romantic and exotic “once upon a time” version of Georgia. Georgians have been particularly tantalized by images of the strange sexual practices of these mountains (called ts‘ats’loba), which represent a kind of paradoxical “sex without sex,” a seeming inversion of normative Georgian sexuality, belonging at the same time to the most “Georgian” part of Georgia. Fragmentary images of this “Georgian ancestral sex” circulate in a complex, multigenred interdiscursive space of citationality, becoming, in this recirculation, a haunting absent presence, representations of a sexual alterity shot through with lacunae and absences, which become full of virtual potentiality as these gaps and absences are filled in with one's own imagination and desire. This article ethnographically traces the citational connections between these fragmentary images of sexuality.